Mystery Arrow Lake-S CPU dominates i9-13900K in benchmarks

What's assumed to be the 14900K is going to be one heck of a CPU

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Arrow Lake is rumored to be released around the first half of 2024, but that doesn’t stop leakers from getting their hands on some Arrow Lake benchmarks for us to compare to the current Raptor Lake CPUs. A mystery Arrow Lake CPU dominates i9-13900K in benchmarks.

Raptor Lake currently holds the most powerful desktop processor we have, the 13900KS, whilst this information focuses on its little brother, the 13900K, it’s easy to see that this Arrow Lake-S CPU still dwarfs the KS variant too. Which is very impressive.

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Arrow Lake CPU performs 21% better than a 13900K in benchmarks with the same 250W TDP

According to a post from Wccftech, and with information from Igor’s Lab, a mystery Arrow Lake-S CPU outperforms the current Raptor Lake king, the 13900K, by 21%.

These results are from Intel’s internal benchmarks and have been leaked to Igor’s Lab presumably by an inside contact. So we can assume this benchmark information to be accurate if the source itself is true.

These benchmarks also include a Raptor Lake-S refresh chip, but we’re primarily interested in what Alder Lake-S has to offer.

Alder Lake-S 6 application benchmark results

Intel seems to be using the same 8+16 chip configurations, meaning all CPUs in the benchmark have the same 24 cores and 32 threads. It’s assumed that this will be the flagship, such as the 15900K, however, this cannot be confirmed, thanks to earlier rumors of the Alder Lake-S flagship possibly using an 8+32 configuration.

The Arrow Lake-S chips were set to a PL2 max of 250W along with the 13900K, and the Raptor Lake-S chip on the other hand, was set to a PL2 max of 253W. The 13900K was used as a baseline and the graph details the Arrow and Raptor Lake CPU’s gains over it.

• Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh – 2% (Average)
• Intel Arrow Lake-S – 14% (Average)

SPECrate2017 performance benchmarks

The new Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh Core i9-14900K performed slightly better, with a gain of less than 5%. This improvement might be due to a higher clock speed of 6.0-6.2 GHz compared to the 13900K. On the other hand, the Arrow Lake-S CPU from Intel showed a much more noticeable gain of up to 21%.

Except for the single-core SPECrate tests, the Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU showed a performance boost in the double digits. It’s important to note that these benchmarks are early and the clock speeds are likely to change before the chips are released. The chips still have more than a year before launch, so there’s time for improvements in the manufacturing process and firmware optimization.

Arrow Lake-S iGPU performance

The Intel Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPUs don’t just perform well in CPU benchmarks. The integrated graphics, called iGPU, also show a significant performance boost of more than 2x the previous generation. This improvement will greatly enhance the graphics performance on laptops and Mini PCs, or anyone who can’t otherwise get a dedicated GPU.

The Intel Raptor Lake-S Refresh Desktop CPUs will be compatible with current motherboards that use the LGA 1700 socket and belong to the 600 and 700-series lineup.

These CPUs are set to launch in October 2023. On the other hand, the Arrow Lake-S Desktop CPU lineup is scheduled to release in late 2024 and will work with LGA 1851 socketed motherboards from the 800-series family.

To learn more about these CPUs, Intel has an Innovation event planned for September 19th, where they will likely share additional details. For now, though, the details look very promising for the future of Intel CPUs. We only wonder if AMD is going to be able to keep up. Especially since a mystery Arrow Lake-S CPU dominates i9-13900K in benchmarks.